EVGA’s Kingpin motherboards are some of the most bonkers out there, proper slabs that are designed for extreme overclocking with hugely impressive power delivery, multiple BIOSes and some unique features. They’re also hugely expensive, normally costing close to $1000, but a deep discount on their Z690 model over at Newegg brings it to $400. That’s still pricey, but a reasonable pickup given the feature list for anyone designing a top-end gaming rig around Intel’s 12th-gen or 13th-gen Core processors.
So do you absolutely need this motherboard if you’re opting for a high-end CPU like the Core i9 13900K? Absolutely not. You’ll get largely the same performance with a ton of much more affordable boards, e.g. the $275 Asus Z790 Gaming Plus WiFi or even the $130 Gigabyte B760M DS3H.
The Kingpin board only makes sense if you’ll actually make use of its advanced features and overspecced components, eg if you’re interested in overclocking the CPU or pushing your RAM to its limit. Most people aren’t sitting around with a vat of liquid nitrogen, of course, but having a board like this will let you push farther and with more control even with relatively standard cooling methods like a tower fan cooler or 240mm+ AiO.
The BIOS offers a ton of options for boosting performance and monitoring your progress, while the 21-phase VRM can push out a huge amount of power to the CPU. This board even comes with a CPU socket that’s rotated 90 degrees to minimise trace length and two DDR5 slots instead of four to allow for higher RAM frequencies and tighter timings to be reached.
Beyond the overclocking, EVGA is known for creating exceptionally stable motherboards that just work well out of the box, and that’s a feature of the Kingpin board too. Again, for the average PC gamer it’s not worth the extra cost, but if you’re speccing a $3000+ system with top-of-the-line components, then you’ll likely have the budget to score a high-end motherboard too – especially at this reduced price.
What do you think – are you interested in a high-end board like this one or do you tend to prefer the cheapest one that supports the CPU and features you want? Let me know in the comments below!
Will Judd
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